Discussion Questions:

1. How would you describe Data General's image at this point in time? How did its history and its market position influence its internal culture? Do any of today's companies come to mind?

2. What are the many factors that motivate the creation of the Eagle. (include both "rational" and "irrational" ones). What are its most important technical and organizational features.

3. How are the members of the Eagle team recruited and motivated? How do they interact with customers and the rest of the outside world? In the end, how are they rewarded?

4. How does the team's relationship with the minicomputer they use differ from that of the computer staff of the 1950s? (Look particularly at chapter 5).

5. How are the activities performed by Data General different from those of a typical PC producer today (think Dell or Gateway)?

Key Points to Revise

Additional Resources

The Amazon review includes some nice comments from readers. The book is being used in business schools and by the recruiters for computer engineering firms.

Wired recently ran a fascinating article where they interviewed the key players from the book and update us on what happened to them 20 years on. This is in Wired 8.12, December 2000 and can be found on their website.

Data General itself actually has a nice little history of computing site. See http://www.dg.com/about/html/generations.html. You can also see how they themselves have relied on the mystique the book brought. See, for example, a presentation they used in the mid-1990s to sell a new server product.

There is a nice summary of the history of DEC and the importance of the minicomputer in  Ceruzzi, Paul. A History of Modern Computing (MIT Press, 1998), on pages 127-141, 193-200, 243-247, 281-289. Ceruzzi's book is the other main history of computing -- it focuses more on hardware and minicomputers than the Campbell-Kelly/Aspray one does.

Page copyright Thomas Haigh -- email thaigh@sas.upenn.edu.    Home: www.tomandmaria.com/tom. Updated 01/18/2002.